When
Thursday, March 5, 2026, at 4:00 p.m.
Tom I-P. Shih
Professor
School of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Purdue University
"Advancing Fundamentals in the Age of Artificial Intelligence"
AME Lecture Hall, Room S202 | Zoom link
Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) was envisioned as early as 1872 in a book entitled "Erewhon" by Samuel Butler as an eventuality of Darwin's theory on evolution and the Industrial Revolution. With today's exa-scale computational power, AI is starting to impact humankind in meaningful ways. These include precision agriculture, computer vision, handwriting recognition, speech recognition, financial market analyses, medical diagnosis, manufacturing and maintenance. Despite the advances, AI has had less success on impacting fundamentals in science and engineering. This talk explores why that is the case. This talk also examines how human intelligence has advanced fluid mechanics and heat transfer and how AI could encapsulate not just the knowledge but also the understanding of the human experts in developing models that could explain physical mechanisms.
Bio: Tom I-P. Shih is professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Purdue University, where he served as the head of the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics from 2009 to 2019. Prior to joining Purdue, he was a mechanical engineer at NASA Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center and served on the faculties at the University of Florida, Carnegie Mellon University, Michigan State University, and Iowa State University (chair of the Department of Aerospace Engineering, 2003–2009). He is currently editor-in-chief of the AIAA Journal and serves on the advisory boards of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Michigan and the Department of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering at West Virginia University. He also serves on the review board of the Air Force Research Laboratory's Collaborative Center for Aeronautical Sciences. Previously, he has served on the Aeronautics Committee of the NASA Advisory Council (2018-21) and chaired the AIAA Committee on Higher Education (2016-23) and the Aerospace Department Chair Association (2005-06).
Shih began his undergraduate education at West Virginia University, but completed his BSE at the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. His MSE and PhD degrees are from The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and received the 2010 Distinguished Engineering Educator Award from the Engineers' Council of San Fernando Valley, the 2015 AIAA Energy Systems Award, the 2020 AIAA Thermophysics Award, the Mechanical Engineering Alumni Merit Award from The University of Michigan in 2023, and the NCKU Distinguished Alumni Award from National Cheng Kung University in 2023.